Anesthesia - History and Origins

Towards Safer Anesthesia

Choloroform's dangerous tendency to cause death from overdose and its severe post-operative symptoms were realized over time. Over the next several years, incessant pursuits were undertaken to look for safer agents and less harmful agents for anesthesia.

Anesthetic apparatus

Further studies on animals, lead to the discovery of tubes that could be placed into the windpipe (leading to the lung) through which oxygen could be inhaled and other inhalation agents could be administered at safe levels and keep the animal alive. This proved to be path- breaking since anesthetic gases like nitrous oxide, vapors from ether for anesthesia, oxygen for resuscitation and ventilation of a patient could now be given via the tube directly into the lungs in a more controlled manner. Further advancement with the anesthetic apparatus and the material of the tubes have continued and made the whole process very safe. The continuous monitoring of oxygen saturation of the body and blood pressure are now a routine in any hospital.

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Curare

As early as the 16th century, Spanish explorers reported the use of a "poison" used by South American tribes to coat their arrow tips while hunting animals. This poison could paralyse the animals & they would die of suffocation. The extracts from which this poisons were studied by different researchers in Europe. They found that the animal so poisoned could be kept alive if its lungs were ventilated with bellows and oxygen given to it because its heart continued to beat even after the poisoning. They called this "curare" after the Red Indian word 'urai' which meant poison. Doctors first started using curare for convulsions during 'shock therapy'.

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The next major breakthrough came in 1942 when, an anesthesiologist Harold Griffith administered synthetic curare to a young man before appendectomy as a muscle relaxant. This was a boon to general anesthesia since surgeons could now access organs and structures within the depths of the body. The anesthetist could now keep the patient asleep with the anesthetic gases, his muscles sufficiently relaxed or immobile for the surgeon to work unhindered, while he was also pain free. Thus was born the modern concept of 'Balanced anesthesia' which is followed currently even today(5^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Curare - A Curative Poison: A Scientometric Analysis

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